John Smedley tweets about banning a "scumbag" from PlanetSide 2, getting rid of a culprit in widely reported hacking incidents in the MMOFPS sequel, saying: "Haruhi at http://artificialaiming.com was just banned. all 3 of his accounts. Goodbye you scumbag. Find a new hobby or get good at the game." He adds the cheater hunt will continue: "we don't need to cross reference anything. Use it.. we'll find you. we'll find your family. we'll hunt you down." Thanks Eurogamer.

Trevellian wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 12:19:Honestly this most likely just sounds like overseas bad connection lag to me. We have a buddy in our Outfit that we know is not cheating, he is simply stationed in Afghanistan. We watch his name bounce around towers all the time. It's rather amusing, though I am sure frustrating to enemy players. It's the only connection they have available on their base though, not really his fault.

Cheats are obvious, we had a vanu guy zipping around last night (literally teleporting) quickscoping and one headshot killing a bunch of guys in my platoon (took out 6 guys before leaving to find more victims). Lag effects your ability to get info on the situation as well as contribute to it, you think a person with a terribad ping (and I play with a 300 ping from Australia and get killed pretty easily) should not be able to quickscope headshots like they were scratching an itch...

If in doubt, /report playername. If they are just lagging they'll be exonerated.

JohnBirshire wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 16:44:I like how the defense against critizing this game is always "You just suck at it.". Sorry, but no. A few good reviews, but mostly mediocre. A release that didn't get much fanfare. A lot of people checking it out and not staying long. It will have a small niche community like Planetside 1 *which actually was a fun game for awhile*, but never anything more than that. If it had a subsription fee, the servers would already be dead.

A major issue IS people "sucking at it". The CoD/BF3 crowd step in expecting a sci-fi version of their games and that is simply wrong. PS2 HAS to be played as a team. Period. You join a squad, the team leader sets a waypoint, you attack as a unit. CoD and BF3 encourage lone wolf behavior. this is a completely different game. until the fucktards wake up and adapt, they'll continue to whine and dismiss one of the best shooters ever made.

Panickd wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 17:28:Not sure what they thought would happen here: let's give bonuses to factions with a certain number of facilities and a different bonus to groups of players with less players but not enough to offset the facility bonuses. What???? I really don't get the whole XP bonus system? Should I even be trying to play?

Here's what happens in this game: Either A) you end up with a decent squad commander and he gets fairly involved in where you go and what you should be doing or B) you join a squad with someone clueless commanding it and nothing whatsoever gets done or C) you join up only to immediately see people shooting teammates or team controlled assets and think, "WTF?".

On top of all that I constantly see speed hacks. It's freaking ridiculous. In addition there are hacks allowing people to get to places they shouldn't have access to, too.

I have all but sworn off this bullshit until they can contain the insane number of people hacking it, which may be never since it's a F2P game and any jackass with an internet connection can join in.

To play devils advocate, stop for two minutes and think about the scope of PS2.....the size, the weapon variables along with empire specific stats, facility stas, gadgets for player, for vehicle, for armor and all the potential permutations when one combines all the aforementioned. its a fucking miracle that the game plays as well as it does. oh, and keeping free players competitive with those who are willing to spend a few bucks.

the game has its issues but cut the dev team some slack. Its an amazing game that has no equal currently.

Swiffle wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 18:04:I'm on NC/Waterson. I can think of 3 TR i've seen clearly hacking speedbotting/aimhacking, as well as 2 VS players. One of the VS players was near the top of the leaderboard, and had just passed me after posting a couple hundred kills in merely an hour. Leaderboards were disabled since then. I haven't played much in the last few days though, so I'm not sure if they're still around.

- Swiffle

Being TR myself it would be harder for me to pick out TR hackers as they aren't shooting at me then. My NC Kills also outnumber my Vanu kills by about 4x. So I have lack of experience with the VS on Waterson. We usually end up butting heads with DVS wherever they are, I see them the most.

Swiffle wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 18:04:I'm on NC/Waterson. I can think of 3 TR i've seen clearly hacking speedbotting/aimhacking, as well as 2 VS players. One of the VS players was near the top of the leaderboard, and had just passed me after posting a couple hundred kills in merely an hour. Leaderboards were disabled since then. I haven't played much in the last few days though, so I'm not sure if they're still around.

- Swiffle

If it's so rampant, don't they have punkbuster or similar antihack solution?

I'm on NC/Waterson. I can think of 3 TR i've seen clearly hacking speedbotting/aimhacking, as well as 2 VS players. One of the VS players was near the top of the leaderboard, and had just passed me after posting a couple hundred kills in merely an hour. Leaderboards were disabled since then. I haven't played much in the last few days though, so I'm not sure if they're still around.

Verno wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 15:09:In any MMO game losing your account is a big deal, I wouldn't want all of my certs / etc gone. I certainly wouldn't want to lose all of my certs / etc. IP bans can affect others and be really unfair.

But you value your certs and achievements and whatever because you actually worked/played for them. How does this translate to a cheater? He (she) cheated his way to them, so what does he care about losing them? Create a new account, cheat your way back to them.

I think the mindset of someone who cheats and gets that self-validation through seeing his score at the top, even though he knows it's unfair, wouldn't be that interested in the long-term stuff, especially if you can just get it back again.

Of course, I am no psychiatrist by any means.

Creston

The difference here is there is no way for a "cheater" to reach the top of the Leaderboards in Planetside 2.The Leaderboards are based on overall Score. It is impossible for a cheater to amass the score needed to reach rank #1 without cheating for days worth of playtime at this point and they would have to not get caught, which is extremely extremely unlikely.

Meaning the only reason to cheat in Planetside 2 is to be a troll and frustrate other people, and has nothing to do with seeing their name up top. Which means these people have deeper issues.

And again as I said, I've not seen anyone I could legitimately accuse of cheating as of yet (personally) I'm sure other people have, either that or they just suck at the game and accuse anyone who gets the drop on them of cheating. There are definitely people ON the leaderboards with like a K:D of 1800:17 I find to be quite suspicious, but given the games nature if you can somehow manage to keep a Liberator up for long periods of time without getting shot down it is plausible, I know I have gone on 80+ Kill streaks as the bomber with us not getting shot down.

That's fair. I haven't played it because the stories of lag have kept me away, and because I have 10,000 other things to play, so I'll take your word for it.

It may not be a "I'm on the leaderboard" thing then, but it's still a gratification issue where they genuinely believe that when they kill you through (or with help of) a cheat, they see themselves as better than you. Little shitheels with no self confidence, most likely. They're probably the same kind of tards who later in life wind up buying a massive Dodge Ram to compensate.

Verno wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 15:54:Yeah that's fair but people cheat for different reasons and even cheating up progression takes time to do. You still need to "earn" all of the stuff that makes the game interesting again. The people who do it to socially disrupt are a different story, the top of scoreboards guy is going to want all of the certs/etc.

They can't really do anything other than ban them though and many companies (EA) are scared to even do that. It is easier to get your EA account banned through forum shenanigans than it is by cheating in one of their online games.

Oh yeah, I don't mean to say that they SHOULDN'T ban the cheaters, just that the whole posturing attitude of Smedley is ridiculous. If you really want to thump your chest that way, make an online game that people CAN'T cheat in.

Not sure what they thought would happen here: let's give bonuses to factions with a certain number of facilities and a different bonus to groups of players with less players but not enough to offset the facility bonuses. What???? I really don't get the whole XP bonus system? Should I even be trying to play?

Here's what happens in this game: Either A) you end up with a decent squad commander and he gets fairly involved in where you go and what you should be doing or B) you join a squad with someone clueless commanding it and nothing whatsoever gets done or C) you join up only to immediately see people shooting teammates or team controlled assets and think, "WTF?".

On top of all that I constantly see speed hacks. It's freaking ridiculous. In addition there are hacks allowing people to get to places they shouldn't have access to, too.

I have all but sworn off this bullshit until they can contain the insane number of people hacking it, which may be never since it's a F2P game and any jackass with an internet connection can join in.

Fion wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 13:28:That is one out of potentially thousands. I run into people using speed hacks or auto-hit hacks almost every day. Combined with the 'huge' problem of each continent being controlled by one faction with 10% pop from others, I've basically stopped playing until they both fix the hacking problems and find a solution to the population issues.

Oh and lgFreiss, that is one of the more common 'hacks'. Combined with a speed hack it makes killing those people impossible. I used to only see them once in a while, now if I spend an hour online I'll encounter half a dozen.

What server are you playing on? On Waterson we have constant even 3 way battles on every continent most nights. There is no problem with Population, most nights the larger Outfits on a faction decide they're going to go for a specific continent Benefit and they push it hard till the other factions abandon the continent due to sheer numbers or better tactics, but you'll find even battles on the other 2 continents almost all the time.

And I've said this in another thread and I'll say it again, since release I play at average probably 4-5 hours on days when I work, and probably upwards of 10 hours on my day off, and have still not encountered 1 person I could clearly accuse of hacking.

That may be what it is. I'm rarely able to play on prime-time, I tend to log in mid-day or so and on Jaegar it's almost always TR/VS/NC controlling each continent with no more than 10-15% population on off-faction continents. So it gets boring either always playing on Esamir 80/20 population, or hopping into Amerish or Indar and being outnumbered 8/1. So I'm really hoping they will add a fourth continent reasonably soon, or find some temporary fix for this issue. Until then perhaps I'll try and shuffle my schedule around so I can play more often on prime-time hours.

I like how the defense against critizing this game is always "You just suck at it.". Sorry, but no. A few good reviews, but mostly mediocre. A release that didn't get much fanfare. A lot of people checking it out and not staying long. It will have a small niche community like Planetside 1 *which actually was a fun game for awhile*, but never anything more than that. If it had a subsription fee, the servers would already be dead.

Verno wrote on Dec 5, 2012, 15:09:In any MMO game losing your account is a big deal, I wouldn't want all of my certs / etc gone. I certainly wouldn't want to lose all of my certs / etc. IP bans can affect others and be really unfair.

But you value your certs and achievements and whatever because you actually worked/played for them. How does this translate to a cheater? He (she) cheated his way to them, so what does he care about losing them? Create a new account, cheat your way back to them.

I think the mindset of someone who cheats and gets that self-validation through seeing his score at the top, even though he knows it's unfair, wouldn't be that interested in the long-term stuff, especially if you can just get it back again.

Of course, I am no psychiatrist by any means.

Creston

The difference here is there is no way for a "cheater" to reach the top of the Leaderboards in Planetside 2.The Leaderboards are based on overall Score. It is impossible for a cheater to amass the score needed to reach rank #1 without cheating for days worth of playtime at this point and they would have to not get caught, which is extremely extremely unlikely.

Meaning the only reason to cheat in Planetside 2 is to be a troll and frustrate other people, and has nothing to do with seeing their name up top. Which means these people have deeper issues.

And again as I said, I've not seen anyone I could legitimately accuse of cheating as of yet (personally) I'm sure other people have, either that or they just suck at the game and accuse anyone who gets the drop on them of cheating. There are definitely people ON the leaderboards with like a K:D of 1800:17 I find to be quite suspicious, but given the games nature if you can somehow manage to keep a Liberator up for long periods of time without getting shot down it is plausible, I know I have gone on 80+ Kill streaks as the bomber with us not getting shot down.